Chontilla

The Essence

"Geonoma stricta is a small, slender understorey palm of lowland Neotropical rainforest, and one of the most taxonomically troublesome palms in the Americas. Andrew Henderson called it "an extremely complicated species": earlier authors treated it either as a single species with several varieties (Henderson 1995) or as several distinct species (Wessels Boer 1968), and fifteen other published names — among them Geonoma pycnostachys, G. piscicauda, G. trailii, G. wittiana, G. bella and G. uleana — are now treated as synonyms of it. Henderson's 2011 genus revision, combining quantitative and qualitative characters with geography, settled on one species with nine subspecies: antioquiensis, arundinacea, bracteata, divaricata, pendula, pliniana, quibdoensis, stricta and submontana. The most widespread of these, subsp. arundinacea, is itself variable enough that Henderson divided it into eight informal morphotypes and suspected introgression and hybridisation among them. Its range is wide but not continuous, falling into four separate areas: the Pacific coast of Colombia (Chocó), the Central Cordillera of Colombia (Antioquia), the central and western Amazon with adjacent sub-Andean regions, and the Guianas with adjacent Amapá in Brazil. GBIF holds about 11,300 occurrence records. Ethnobotanical use is well documented. Leaves serve as thatch, for covering baskets of forest produce and for wrapping; stems become walking sticks, meat skewers, fishing harpoons and stilts; the palm heart is chewed to protect the teeth from rotting; and the seeds are used in blowguns to shoot small birds. An Ecuadorian ethnobotanical inventory also records scraped stem tissue packed into shotgun cartridges alongside the shot, and dried leaves smoked before a hunt to bring good results. PALMweb's account of subsp. arundinacea adds stems used by the Urarina of Peru as mosquito-net supports and for fishing spears. No English common name exists — Palmpedia and Trebrown both record "none known" — though GBIF carries local Ecuadorian vernaculars."

Described by Poiteau as Gynestum strictum and transferred to Geonoma by Kunth in Enumeratio Plantarum 3: 232 (1841).